9 gen 1781 anni - Surrender of General Cornwallis at Yorktown

Descrizione:

Cornwallis had driven General George Washington’s Patriot forces out of New Jersey in 1776, and led his Recoats in victory over General Horatio Gates and the Patriots at Camden, South Carolina, in 1780. In April 1781 he led his battered troops toward the Virginia coast, where he could maintain seaborne lines of communication with the large British army of General Henry Clinton in New York City. Washington instructed the Marquis de Lafayette, who was in Virginia with an American army of around 5,000 men, to block Cornwallis’ escape from Yorktown by land. In the meantime, Washington’s 2,500 troops in New York were joined by a French army of 4,000 men under the Count de Rochambeau. They ended up making Cornwallis formally surrender 8,000 British soldiers and seamen to a French and American force at Yorktown.